Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/167

Rh the ultimate source of the world's alphabets." Ultimate it certainly is, in the sense of being that alphabet from which the others derive themselves, in part through many intermediaries; the point in which they all centre: but if Mr. Müller had looked at the twelfth lecture, in which the Phœnician mode of writing is made the subject of more than a mere passing remark, he would have found its own derivative character most explicitly asserted and supported.

If Prof. Müller has not been willing to read until just now the work in which I had independently and connectedly put forth my own system of views, he has not, of course, been in a position to estimate fairly the critical articles in which I have had the avowed polemical intention of trying whether they could stand their ground and make head against the opposing views of other writers. It might naturally enough seem to him that I was too pugnacious. But I cannot help questioning whether he has ever read those articles also, or knows them in any other way than as he knows the one recently used in the pages of the Contemporary by Mr. Darwin: namely, in fragments and by the report of others. I am confident that he would not otherwise so misconceive their spirit, imagining that I am in the habit of making general depreciatory remarks about the scholars whose works I examine, and of casting hard words at them in place of arguments. He cites a little list of such words, which have caught his eye as he turned over my pages, and which he has conceived to be applied to himself. I cannot help quoting a passage in which—and, so far as I know, in which alone—two or three of them actually occur. After explaining my own views as to the origin of language at some length, I add (p. 434): "The view of language and of its origin which has been here set forth will, as I well know, be denounced by many as a low view: but the condemnation need not give us much concern. It is desirable to aim low, if thereby one hits the mark; better humble and true than high-flown, pretentious, and false." The words here underscored are those complained of by Prof. Müller: if they are applied to him, or to any one else, it must be by himself, not by me. Those to whom my works are really known will, I am sure, defend me against Mr. Müller's unfortunate misapprehension. I do not judge men, but views, and especially the arguments by which views are upheld. If I deem the latter insufficient or erroneous, I confess that I am apt to speak my mind about them too plainly. If one finds a whole argument founded on the assumption that two and two are five, it is, of course, the true way to say that "Sir Isaac Newton would not have reasoned thus; and, on the whole, it is safer for us to agree with Sir Isaac," rather than to declare the assumption false, and every thing built upon it unsound: yet, after all, if the latter is really true, and if the occasion for bringing out the truth is a sufficient one, and if the critic shows good faith, a desire to arrive at the truth and to treat his opponent with substantial justice, the shorter and blunter way is not